


wishbone

by deliveryservice



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M, Summer Romance, Third Year, Unrequited Love, and they were neighbours (oh my god they were neighbours)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliveryservice/pseuds/deliveryservice
Summary: “After summer ends,” Tsutomu says after a long moment. He still won’t look at Kei, but under the light of the moon and the stars, his gaze is drawn and wistful. “Will we still be friends?”“You’re overthinking it,” Kei sighs. He takes Tsutomu’s hand without hesitation. It’s dark but he would know the shape of Tsutomu’s hands anywhere. He would know them even when his eyes can’t see and his hands can’t feel. He would know the lines of Tsutomu’s palm, the calluses stretched on his skin, in stillness. He would know them even at the end of the world.“It’s a valid concern.” Tsutomu scowls. He only sounds slightly petulant, but his hand squeezes Kei’s. His grip is a little too tight, but he stops squeezing just before their interlocked hands shift from uncomfortable to painful. “We’re enemies.”“Volleyball rivals,” Kei corrects. “We’re not meant to fight to the death, you know."Tsutomu moves into the house across Kei's the summer before their third year. With him, he carries his sister, unprocessed emotional baggage, and something new into Kei's life.As all good things do, it doesn't last.
Relationships: Goshiki Tsutomu/Tsukishima Kei
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	wishbone

**Author's Note:**

> *begins handing out the tsukigoshi manifesto*
> 
> [vibes, though you could keep our last summer by abba on repeat and it'd have the same effect](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3pPFvseLyG2qlEVvjuQ4z7?si=yGSMq2wvRPuwpeQvlMdnmw)
> 
> cw: alcoholism (not from the main characters) in the latter half. verbal abuse from parents (mild, but the warning is still there) also in the latter half.

> "I swear, I end up feeling empty, like you've taken something out of me, and I have to search my body for the scars, thinking _Did he find that one last tender place to sink his teeth in?_ "

This is a story about love, but it is not a love story. Not yet—and maybe, not ever. Stil: It is a story about love and the possibilities of what is lost.

⁕

The doorbell rings when Kei is in the middle of sorting through his playlists.

“Kei, could you get the door?” His mother calls out from the kitchen. She’s in the middle of preparing dinner for the both of them.

“Yeah,” he says, already out his room and walking to the door. He peeks through the peephole, and sees a familiar head of choppy bangs and bowl-cut hair. What is Shiratorizawa’s ace doing on his doorstep?

Just as Kei opens the door, the doorbell rings again. Tsutomu’s finger hangs in the air, scrutinized under Kei’s judging stare. Kei’s never liked it when people weren’t patient enough to wait.

Sheepishness is the first look that crosses Tsutomu’s features upon being caught, only to have it morph into disbelief barely a moment after he catches the sight of Kei’s face. 

“Karasuno’s four-eyes?!” Tsutomu gapes, pointing his index finger at Kei’s face.

“Don’t point, nii-chan! That’s rude!” a high, shrilly voice points out. Kei looks down to see a little girl hiding behind Tsutomu, glancing at him with a look that could only be deciphered as admonishment.

There’s something extremely satisfying about seeing Tsutomu being bossed around by a little girl who looks twelve, at most. Kei doesn’t bother to hold back his snickers, because it’s always fun to laugh at someone else’s misery.

“Are you lost?” Kei asks once he’s calmed down, completely unaffected by Tsutomu’s glare. Kei’s witnessed kittens look more intimidating.

“Mom sent us to say hello to our neighbors!” Tsutomu’s sister chirps, pushing past Tsutomu’s legs and standing in front of him instead of behind. Now it looks like Tsutomu’s hiding behind his younger sister. “Do you guys know each other?”

“I’ve beaten your brother in volleyball before,” Kei says; not to boast, but to annoy. Judging from the increased intensity in Tsutomu’s glare, his efforts are far from fruitless. “Neighbors?”

“Yes!” she chirps, nodding so hard her ponytail jumps. “We just moved in today! Right, nii-chan?”

“Huh?” Tsutomu blurts, before regaining his composure. He clears his throat and straightens his back like he’s talking to his coach. “I mean, yes! What she said!”

Kei sighs. As much as he’d rather have them go home and go back to going on his phone, he was raised with manners; the food they’re carrying in their hands doesn’t look very light, too. Begrudgingly, Kei opens the door a little wider and steps aside, allowing a berth.

“Come in, I guess,” he mutters. The girl walks inside with a spring in her step and a giggle, while Tsutomu trails behind her more quietly; maybe he’s still in shock. “Take off your shoes,” Kei has to remind him, while his sister laughs. 

As far as Kei’s concerned, his sister is the superior Goshiki.

“Who’s that, Kei?” his mother asks. Her voice has never been the loudest—it’s a testament to the house’s echoes that her words reach them without them straining the ears to hear. 

“New neighbours,” Kei answers, voice slightly louder. “She’s cooking dinner right now.”

Tsutomu stammers, “I think we should go home, Temari! We don’t want to interrupt their dinner, right?” He sends a pleading look Kei’s way, waiting for Kei to back him up. Kei only forms a sardonic smile, and Tsutomu’s gaze shifts from pleading to betrayed.

Kei’d nearly forgotten he could replicate the look hitters got when he blocked their shots outside of the court, too.

“Can we stay for dinner?” Temari asks, beaming at Kei with all the shamelessness of someone who had just invited themselves to a family affair. Kei tries not to be too hard on her: She’s probably twelve. “Nii-chan hasn’t cooked dinner today and I don’t want to eat store-bought bento again.”

“Hey, Temari.” Even though he’s obviously flustered, Tsutomu still attempts to keep Temari’s mouth shut, placing his palm over her mouth while bowing profusely at Kei. The tips of his ears are sakura pink. “We’re sorry for the intrusion!”

Tsutomu doesn’t just exclaim, or announces—he shouts at the top of his lungs. Kei almost puts _his_ palm over Tsutomu’s mouth; forming a keeping each other’s mouths shut baton pass. He doesn’t do it, but his fingers itch.

“So loud!” his mother complains. She’s left the kitchen to investigate the noises; the sunflower apron Kei had gotten her last year for mother’s day hangs proudly on her frame.

“Hello! How long have you been in the neighbourhood?” she asks with all the sunny disposition Akiteru has in spades, and Kei has none of. “I noticed some moving cars a while back, but I’ve been too busy to investigate myself; you’ll have to excuse me.”

“It’s okay!” Tsutomu shouts, again. He catches the poorly-veiled cringe on Kei’s face and his back goes ramrod straight; then he’s bowing, over and over to Kei’s mother, moving back and forth so rapidly that Kei has motion sickness just watching him. “I’m sorry!”—a shout—“I mean, I’m sorry,” he repeats. This time, it’s a stage whisper.

His mother only looks amused, even as she gently brings Tsutomu back up, tapping him once on the shoulder. “It’s alright, dear. The house is lively, for once—thank you for that.” She smiles at Tsutomu and he blushes. Kei eyes Tsutomu with a healthy mix of hostility and suspicion. “The both of you should stay for dinner. I always make too much, even when it’s only for Kei and I.”

Tsutomu and Temari are in perfect unison when they say, not shouting but still loudly enough it disrupts room volume, “Thank you so much!”

⁕

“Your rice is really good, Tsukishima-san!”

“Yes! It beats every sushi rice I’ve ever tried—ever!”

Dinner hasn’t been so loud, or eventful, in three months. Three months, because that was the last time Akiteru had found the time to come home amidst the schedule of his new job. Kei barely talks in the dining table, even when it’s his brother and they’ve mended their rusted bridge, but he finds himself talking more with the Goshiki duo having dinner at his house.

Mostly, it’s to poke fun at Tsutomu’s table manners. They aren’t bad, per se; but Tsutomu, Kei has learned, has the tendency to chew loudly when he isn’t paying attention to _eating_ and is instead making excited commentary about the texture of rice. His eyes shine and his body always seems to move with grand gestures, with excitement, when he’s talking about their meal—first it was the miso soup, and now it’s the consistency of the rice in Kei’s house.

“It’s just normal rice,” his mother says, looking between the pair of siblings with fondness and exasperation, even if Kei can tell she’s overwhelmed. Even when Akiteru is around, dinner never gets to this degree of lively. 

“No way! You must’ve added a secret ingredient,” Temari whispers, staring with saucer-wide eyes at his mother before she takes a large bite of her chicken katsu. “You should teach nii-chan how to cook,” she says, through a mouthful of food.

“And _I_ should be teaching _you_ table manners,” Tsutomu admonishes, looking scandalized at his sister’s nonexistent table manners. She happily munches and chews, completely ignoring him. Kei chuckles before he takes a small-sized bite of his food. “I’m very sorry for intruding into your house like this,” he apologizes, both to Kei and his mother.

Kei’s about to say something along the lines of ‘apology accepted’, though his mother beats him first—saying something just as he’s begun opening his mouth. 

“I really don’t mind. The house gets terribly lonely, sometimes,” she admits. Her smile is a little wistful, a little sad; Kei would’ve felt guilt over his inability to liven up the table, like what Akiteru could do, except he’s grown to accept that the niceties of social interactions have always, and maybe it always would, elude him. “You’re free to come again whenever you’d like.”

Kei nearly drops his chopsticks; stares at his mother with wide eyes, surprised. “Huh?” he says, not intelligently. 

“It’d be good for you to be around more people your age, Kei-kun.”

“I have Yamaguchi.”

“He hasn’t been coming over as often as usual lately, though,” she points out.

Kei takes a look at their guests at the dining table; weighs his options, and realizes the information’s bound to come out sooner or later anyways (so it’s not like _he’s_ to blame if the enemy catches wind of it), and says, “He’s preparing for next year’s volleyball club activities, since he’s the new captain. He’s busy.”

Tsutomu audibly gapes. Kei doesn’t know how he does that—nor does he know if he even _wants_ to know. “He’s going to be your next captain?!” he blurts out.

“Yeah,” Kei says. “Do you have a problem with that?” he asks; voice teetering just on the edge of danger. Kei doesn’t like to make it a habit of defending Yamaguchi, because Yamaguchi is more than capable of defending himself—but if someone from Shiratorizawa is planning to undermine his position as captain when Yamaguchi isn’t even here, Kei will do what he needs to do, even if it’ll cost him with extra chores from his mother for disrupting the dinner’s peaceful atmosphere. 

“No!” Tsutomu quickly answers, shaking his head. His bowl cut flaps along; to Kei, it’s ridiculous how he’s gone nearly three years with it and still thinks it’s a good fashion choice, stylistically. “I just didn’t see that coming,” he mutters. 

“Who did you think would be captain, then?”

“That setter of yours—number nine.”

Kei can’t help it: He snorts. “Yeah, right.”

His mother looks between the two of them, and after a moment, claps her hands. “Ah! The two of you play volleyball together?”

“We’ve played against each other several times,” Tsutomu says, at the same time Kei answers, “Yeah, I’ve beaten him before.”

Tsutomu glares at him, miffed; Kei’s more than happy to dish out what he’d received, sending his most mocking stare at the ace’s way.

Their little glaring match is disrupted by a set of giggles; it’s Temari, glancing between them like they’re a pair of entertainers on TV. “The two of you are funny!” she chortles. Kei’s embarrassed he has to be admonished by a middle schooler to keep his cool—and acts like it’d never happened, leaning back into his chair without so much as a huff. He pushes down the urge to fix his glasses like he’s in an anime.

“No wonder you looked familiar!” his mother, bless her soul, doesn’t seem to realize what’d just happened—dismisses her son’s pettiness like it’s nothing special. “I think I’ve seen you before in Akiteru-kun’s videos of his match, back during his first year. Shiratorizawa, was it?”

Tsutomu glows with pride upon hearing the name of his school; even if, technically, he’d lost the match she’s referring to. “Yes! I’m Shiratorizawa’s ace!”

“That’s amazing,” she says with a smile. “Why don’t you come over and play with Kei-kun sometimes? I know we have some volleyballs around the house.”

“ _Mom_.”

“I’m just saying,” she defends herself, “I know you like playing with your brother when he’s here.”

Tsutomu peers at Kei—kind of like an over-excited puppy, now that he thinks about it. Kei wants to say something about how their schools are rivals and there’s nothing to be gained from playing with the enemy, lest you want your tricks announced before they’re ready. But there’s something in Tsutomu’s excitement, constellations in his eyes and vibrations rolling his shoulders, that has Kei hesitating.

Hesitation, in the end, costs him.

“I’d love to!” Tsutomu accepts the offer without giving Kei the chance to refuse. “I’ll be sure to come over often!”

This is the beginning of Kei’s unraveling and Tsutomu’s demise.

⁕

It hasn’t been a week before a Goshiki visits his house again.

Tsutomu has yet to come by and take up Kei’s mother’s offer of playing volleyball with her son, which is good: Tsutomu is a good volleyball player, his straights only getting more and more monstrous and troublesome as he grows in talent and unsheathes his potential through the years, but Kei doubts he could keep up with his energy. Tsutomu is ambitious and constantly yearns for more. 

More improvement, more hits spiked, more recognition. Tsutomu sits among the ranks of volleyball monsters, with Hinata and Kageyama; his own senior, Ushiwaka; Bokuto, who’s taken up a volleyball scholarship, the last Kei’s heard from Kuroo; and all the other talented players who breathe volleyball, always looking for something bigger than themselves.

Almost three years have passed since Kei’s discovered his moment, and a part of him gets it. Understands why the volleyball monsters are the way that they are, a part of him yearning for that something larger than life, too. At his core, though, Kei isn’t a volleyball monster; he wasn’t born of ambition and a cacophony of stars. Kei was born human, and while he has tasted the sky, he remains human. Rooted to the earth, a realist in his core.

Tsutomu is Tsutomu, and Kei is Kei. Better not to make it Tsutomu and Kei; like two pieces of different puzzles, they were meant for different boards, and forcing them to fit together will never work.

That’s how Kei sees it, but the nature of his thoughts don’t explain why Temari is standing on his porch, backpack lugged over her shoulder.

“Your brother’s not here,” Kei says as he opens the door, only slightly. Convinced she will leave as soon as she knows Tsutomu isn’t holed up in Kei’s house, tossing volleyballs at the walls. 

“I know he isn’t! He’s at home.” Temari grins. She proudly shows off a missing front tooth.

“Then why are you here?” Kei sighs. He hadn’t wanted, nor planned, to spend his summer babysitting.

She peers up at him through her lashes, putting puppy-dog eyes on full display. Temari has to stand on the balls of her feet to even reach slightly above Kei’s stomach. Surprising, considering Kei had assumed kids would be taller these days. “Can I come inside and meet your mom? She told me she’d teach me how’ta cook!”

Slightly dumbfounded, Kei lets her inside, and shuts the door behind her. His mother hadn’t told him to expect any company, but that’s his mother; constantly making plans and taking charge of her life and future protege with her own two hands. He finds the two of them chatting in the living room, Temari practically bouncing in her seat as his mother looks at her with something close to adoration.

Kei knows she’s always wanted a daughter, and worries if he should keep an eye on her to make sure she wouldn’t kidnap someone else’s. That wouldn’t be good.

“Oh, Kei!” his mother notices him just now. “Could you get some of the macarons I kept in the fridge? I’ll be sharing some with Temari-chan over here.” She boops Temari’s nose. Kei’s ‘Make Sure Mom Doesn’t Kidnap Someone’s Daughter’ radar goes up by 130 percent.

“Yeah, yeah,” Kei mutters. Like the dutiful son he is, he fetches the box of macarons; opens the lid, just a little, and takes the last piece of strawberry macaron, popping it into his mouth before he presents the rest of it to his mother. She takes one look at his shut mouth, sees him chewing, and grins. He already knows what’s coming, which is why he’s the first to say, “The strawberry ones were good,” a little defensively.

“I’ll get you a full box of them next time,” she teases, eyes brimming with mirth.

“Ah!” Temari doesn’t point her finger at him like Tsutomu did, but her face gains a brilliant beam. “Do you like strawberries too? They’re my favorite fruit! Though brother always says they’re berries, not fruit.”

It’s a testament to Kei’s experience in dealing with idiots—namely, Hinata and Kageyama; along with Bokuto, on occasion—that he doesn’t bat an eyelash. His patience has been saintly lately. Yamaguchi would be proud of how far he’s come. “Berries are fruits.”

“Huh?!” she gasps in disbelief, looking like her entire worldview has been torn to shreds. At first, she looks at Kei with suspicion, before something clicks and she softens, nodding. “You look like you’re smarter than him, so I’ll believe you. For now.”

“What do you mean, for now?” Kei hates he’s been drawn into bickering with a middle schooler. He must be getting so, very bored this summer. “Look it up on the internet and you’ll see I’m right.”

Temari looks to his mother with a pleading stare. His mother wilts like a child succumbing to the joy of their brand new toy. “Of course you can borrow my phone, sweetheart!”

Kei feels a little ridiculous just standing there as she types furiously onto his mother’s phone.

“Oh my god!” she wails, showing off the search screen that had said, yes, berries are considered fruit. “You were right.”

“Of course I was.”

“ _Kei_ ,” his mother chides. Kei’s stare turns befuddled—of course his mother would side over an _adorable_ little girl over his lanky patchwork of a son. That isn’t an observation made in bitterness, as Kei doesn’t care enough for that; it’s only one made in exasperation. Kei does hope Temari’s parents know his mother would absolutely steal her away, given the chance.

“I have top marks, mom. I’d know these things,” he says, not unkindly.

“You have good grades?!” Before he realizes it, Temari has ran off the couch to stand before him, standing on her tiptoes and stars present in her eyes. “You’re like, the cool older brother! _My_ real brother doesn’t get good grades,” and voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, she adds, “he almost failed his Japanese classes last semester—and you wouldn’t believe the amount of times I’ve had to help him with his papers! I’m _twelve_!”

Because this is the only thing that comes to mind, Kei says, “I hope you get rewarded for your efforts. Does he give you extra lunch money?”

Why he’s even entertaining the conversation, Kei’s not sure. Must be the lack of social interaction, given Yamaguchi is still busy, and Kei’s been neglecting to answer his messages. He dreads checking his notifications, once he’s turned them back on: Bokuto and Kuroo must’ve blown up their group chat, he’d stake his kidney on this.

“He doesn’t,” she says. Kei realizes they must be gossiping. A petty indulgence, but not one he denies himself of. “And he’s always too busy to pay me with his time, too! It’s always practice this, practice that.” She kicks dust from a lone feet, pouting at the ground.

If Kei actually liked kids, or had the inclination for a younger sibling, it might’ve sparked the instincts of a protective older brother. Kei doesn’t, though; so it doesn’t awaken anything brotherly in him—he has always been the younger brother type, Akiteru would often tease, what with him addressing Akiteru with ‘nii-chan’ well past childhood—but he can commiserate, at least.

He knows how she must be feeling; _has_ experienced that himself years ago.

“You’ll just have to extract your payment by force. Be like a loan shark—make his life a living hell by being persistent.” Kei ruffles her hair. “You can do it.” On anyone else, it might’ve sounded encouraging. On Kei, the words sound sarcastic, but judging by Temari’s brightened expression, he doubts it came across that way to her.

“I’ll be the worst loan shark ever!” Temari grins.

“That’s the spirit. Or maybe you can just chop off his hair when he’s sleeping.” Tsutomu must be attached to the dreadful hairstyle, because why else would someone willingly stick that long with a bowlcut? Kei’s not the most fashionable person in the world, but even _he_ knows better than that.

Before Kei resumes his impromptu lesson on raising Temari to be a hellion in her own right, the doorbell rings again. “I’ll have to get that,” he excuses himself. Temari goes back to his mother on the couch, they begin chatting as if he’d never interrupted them, and Kei goes to open the front door.

“Is my sister here?” Tsutomu asks the moment the door begins to creak.

“Yeah,” Kei answers, “she’s socializing with my mom.”

“Oh. Do you think she’ll be here for a while?”

“Probably,” Kei says, and believes his answer. There’s no knowing how long their conversation might last, but he’ll make sure his mother doesn’t accidentally kidnap her by having her stay for too long. He’s the dutiful son that way. “Was there anything else?” he asks, sounding obviously bored—doesn’t even bother to conceal it from his tone, not out of malice, but because Kei can think of several things he’d rather be doing than playing doorman to the Goshiki siblings during a precious, do-nothing-all-you-want summer day.

Tsutomu appears to be constipated, or at the very least at war with himself, as he struggles to get his next words out. Kei’s patience might’ve improved, but it wears thin with every second wasted with an opened mouth only to shut again, fists clenching and unclenching at his side.

Maybe he really does need to use the bathroom?

“Can I come in?” he finally asks—no, shouts—red in the cheeks and ashen in face. “Please!” the additional word is shouted, too, because Tsutomu does nothing scarcely.

Kei takes him by his elbow and pulls him inside before their other neighbors start complaining for noise disturbance and closes the door with a kick of his foot. Tsutomu stumbles when Kei lets him go, glancing between the door and Kei like he might just bolt, even after begging to be let in.

“I hope you know,” Kei says, “I was about to enjoy a peaceful nap.”

Tsutomu doesn’t look the slightest bit apologetic. “So? I’ll go sit in with my sister and your mom, then you can take all the naps you want.”

“You _shouted in my face_ ,” Kei hisses, “like hell I’m still sleepy enough for a nap. Also: You might not want to sit in on them.”

“Why?” Tsutomu looks genuinely alarmed. Kei has to hold onto his elbow again to stop him from bolting into their living room before he’d even taken off his shoes.

“I doubt you’d be able to understand a thing they’re saying,” Kei drones; girl talk has always been a mystery to him, and Kei is _Kei_. Not tactless, fairly knowledgeable, perfectly—if falsely, depending on his mood and the company—pleasant. “Just come with me,” he grumbles, and laments his life decisions and whatever circumstances had made the Goshiki family move in across him as he leads Tsutomu to his room.

He doesn’t know why Tsutomu’s gone even redder in the face when he realizes where Kei had led him to, looking around Kei’s room with all the fashion of a mouse introduced to a mouse trap. “I’m not going to murder you,” Kei says. Honestly—just what sort of an impression had he left on the Shiratorizawa players that they seemed so afraid about just being in his _bedroom_? Kei’s always enjoyed shutting down their hits and relished in the feeling of successfully thwarting their attempts, and maybe he’s often more sardonic than usual on the court (especially to his opponents), but it’s not like he would chew Tsutomu’s head off.

After hearing more about him from Temari earlier, Kei decides that even if he _did_ chew off people’s heads, Tsutomu’s would be revolting to him, even then.

“I know,” Tsutomu finally says, after a long moment of glaring holes at the lone poster in the center of Kei’s room: It’s the spinosaurus from Jurassic Park 3, a little worn at the edges but still, as all of Kei’s things are, carefully preserved. An echo of his childhood. “It’s just my first time being in another guy’s room.”

Kei’s eyes widen with realization, and unwittingly, his cheeks flame, too. Now they’re matching in red. “Jesus,” Kei says, even though he isn’t even Christian, “Goshiki, I’m not trying to proposition you,” he finally manages to strangle out of his throat once he’s found his voice. “What the hell gave you that idea?”

“Um. Um!” Tsutomu flails his limbs, and practically jumps as he turns around, his back facing Kei, to stare at the wall. “It’s—can we just forget about this?” he begs, and Kei is too mortified and embarrassed to lord this over his head.

Dumbly, he nods; and then he realizes Tsutomu can’t see him. “Oi, turn around,” he instructs, waiting for Tsutomu to face him properly again (it’s a personal peeve of him to have people talk to him without even _glancing_ his way: Kei might not be the pinnacle of sensitivity, but he hates feeling dismissed) before saying, “ I’m not even going to ask—I’ll just try to block out the last few seconds from my memories.”

“Me too,” Tsutomu seconds, and then there’s silence. Awkward silence, to be precise. Tsutomu looks around Kei’s room, practically fraying with nerves, while Kei just stands there, at loss of what to say. He has never been good at playing friendly with others, and _especially_ doesn’t know how to initiate _friendly_ conversation.

So he doesn’t. Kei doesn’t start talking to Tsutomu to pry about himself or find their shared interests, inside throwing himself on his bed with a sigh, ignoring Tsutomu’s incredulous stare. He pretends the other boy isn’t there as he makes himself comfortable and pulls his thin blanket—the one made just for summertime—across his stomach. “I’m going to take a nap, but I’m a light sleeper. If you try anything in my room, I’ll know. Don’t look through my stuff.”

Kei sleeps with an opponent (albeit, a very confused, still slightly flustered opponent) as his first line of defense, his human meat shield, should anything eventful occur in his sleep. He hadn’t been lying about being a light sleeper: So Kei doesn’t have the deepest of afternoon slumbers, and he finds himself tossing and turning constantly, even waking at the sound of footsteps, drowned exclaims, and a creaking door. He peeks an eye open once and sees Tsutomu leaving his room, a Temari-sized glob (it probably is Temari) standing outside his room. When he wakes up later, the sun close to setting and both siblings out of his hair and his house, the only thing out of place in his room is Kei’s hardcover copy of ‘An Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs.’

⁕

“Temari’s missing,” Tsutomu immediately says when he sees a head of blond hair opening the door.

Kei’s face shifts quickly from worn annoyance to light worry; light, because the change is a minuscule one, and he turns impassive the moment he recovers his bearings. “She isn’t here,” he says, and this much is true. “Have you tried calling her?”

“She’s not answering her phone.” Tsutomu shows off his phone logs. He’d left at least a dozen missed calls. “Will you help me look for her?”

Why me? Kei could ask. Why me, and not your parents? 

He could ask, but he doesn’t. It only takes another look for him to pick out the panic and fear swimming, drowning, together within Tsutomu that he makes up his mind. “Yeah. Just give me a minute to change,” because he’s still in the clothes he’d worn to sleep last night, and the last thing he wants is to show off his stegosaurus-printed pants to the world.

Tsutomu doesn’t even come inside as Kei bolts to his room to change, waiting for him on his doorstep. Kei packs a bag with his phone, a water bottle, and some snacks his mother bought recently for Temari whenever she visited (which was an almost regular occurrence), forgoing to bring his headphones with him. It’s a good thing, he decides, that his mother isn’t home, currently busy going out with her friends. If his initial reaction was to fret, his mother’s would’ve been raising hell.

“Okay.” Kei pockets the key in his pants once he’s standing outside, standing outside ready and wearing his volleyball shoes. They’re coincidentally his fastest shoes. 

They search the neighborhood first, scouring the gaps between houses, trying to see if she might’ve gone somewhere to hide. Kei and Tsutomu take turns knocking on doors and asking if Temari was with them, and the answer was always the same. They check the park, and then the playground (even if Temari’s a few years too old to be frequenting them now), and only hit their lucky break once Kei suggests the mall.

“Why would she be at the mall?” Tsutomu asks. He’s begun sweating from all the walking and prodding they’ve done, though neither him nor Kei are red in the face, staminas used to depleting worse than this. They’d been redder that day in Kei’s bedroom with a misunderstanding.

“Isn’t she twelve?” When Tsutomu only looks at him in confusion, like he doesn’t understand at all what Kei’s trying to get at, he explains, “I’m pretty sure girls her age are interested in shopping for themselves. Maybe she’s just hanging out with friends there.”

“Without telling me?” Tsutomu’s voice breaks, and—oh, those are tears.

Kei isn’t good at this: He is terrible at comforting people, at finding the right words to say in order to build someone up instead of tearing them down, leaving them scattered like a house of cards. He wishes Yamaguchi were here; then he could thrust the responsibility to be responsible into his best friend’s hands instead. But Yamaguchi isn’t, so Kei has to make do for himself, even if he (valiantly) holds a cringe.

“Sometimes,” his voice is the most awkward it has ever been in his entire life, “baby birds need to leave their nest.”

That must’ve been the worst analogy he could’ve chosen. Instead of looking profoundly tearful at Kei’s inspiring words, or suddenly regaining the vigor he’d lost, Tsutomu instead asks, “You said _sometimes_! That means they don’t have to—and what does Temari have to do with birds?! She’s a human being!”

“I was getting to the point,” Kei says, trying his hardest not to grit his teeth. Being a good person is a more difficult labour than he’d expected. “Temari’s twelve. She’s your little sister, but she’s not necessarily a little girl anymore,” he tries saying, only to have Tsutomu interrupting him by furiously saying something about how Temari is _absolutely_ still a little girl. “Twelve is young, and she’s not a _teen_ , but she’s not a baby. Sometimes,” Kei thinks back on his childhood, and how he’d lived wanting Akiteru’s attention, but at the same time, he’d been happy to have his own life outside of him, “as much as you love your older brother, you know you can’t always be attached to his hip too.” 

Tsutomu snorts his falling snot back into his nose and wipes the back of his hand furiously against his red eyes. Kei is only slightly disgusted. “I just don’t want her to not need me anymore.”

Kei’s heart doesn’t break at Tsutomu’s broken words. He does not feel enough for Tsutomu for that; does not empathize enough, doesn’t understand. Kei doesn’t know what it feels like to be in the shoes of the older sibling. He has experience of being in Temari’s shoes, though, the soles of the younger; he’s grown himself out of the little thing that scurried in Akiteru’s shadow, but that doesn’t mean he’d stopped caring for his older brother—and Kei thinks, if he tried, he might find a part of him that would always need Akiteru in his life, even now that his high school days are nearly at their end.

“You don’t know that,” Kei says. He doesn’t pat Tsutomu’s back, doesn’t do much at all to offer him physical comfort. Even trying to emotionally comfort him is already enough to leave him feeling drained—maybe tired, a little empty. “Those thoughts are hers to think, and the decision for that is hers to make. Just because _you_ may think that doesn’t mean it’s true. It’s not like you’re a mind-reader. If you were, I wouldn’t have shut down your spikes so much during our last match.”

The snide comment is there because otherwise, Kei’s not sure if he’ll feel like himself. Being a good, kind person is so, very tiring. It’s much easier, more natural, for him to play the caustic role. 

“I got a bunch of hits past your blocks too! Why are you forgetting that?” Tsutomu retorts, finally sounding more alive, a little less sad. Kei’s relieved to hear that, even if it is at the slight cost of his pride. “Alright,” Tsutomu says, his fire rekindled. “Let’s check the mall.”

When they find her at the mall, scarfing down a burger in the food court, Kei has a different set of worries that aren’t his skewed view of morality: It’s preserving _Tsutomu_ ’s own conscience, holding him back from committing a very public act of violence—and possibly murder—on the boy Temari is out with, taking her out on an innocent, quiet date. 

Kei has a horrible time multitasking, restraining Tsutomu while trying not to die of embarrassment himself from the odd looks they’re getting from the people walking past them, seeing Kei hold tightly onto Tsutomu’s waist to keep him from leaping, as they’re perched behind the bushes right outside the food court like a pair of sitcom characters. 

“Calm down!” he hisses, loudly enough the onlookers might as well capture what he’s saying on their cameras, though from the way Tsutomu still squirms and struggles to leap free from his tightened grip, he might as well be deaf from rage. “You can’t play volleyball if you have criminal assault on your record,” Kei tries a different method of approach.

Surprisingly, Tsutomu listens when volleyball is mentioned. He doesn’t look happy as he stops struggling in Kei’s grip, still glaring daggers at the boy Temari’s out on a date with, but at least he isn’t about to attack anyone anymore. At least, Kei hopes he won’t, as he slowly, warily, loosens his grip; just barely, so that if Tsutomu _does_ try to attack him, Kei’s still close enough to stop him.

“Who does he think he is, looking at Temari like that?!” Tsutomu growls. For a second, Kei worries he’s about to lunge. He doesn’t, taking deep breaths to force himself to calm down, even if he never once looks at Kei instead of letting his stare drift from the couple. “And—and why didn’t she tell me about this?”

“Maybe because she was worried about her date’s fate?” Kei offers. Let it be said Kei Tsukishima is, at his core, a bastard. Perhaps not a bastard in the literal sense, but it fits him accurately enough Kei would think he deserves a picture of himself under its definition on the modern dictionary; or at least the Urban Dictionary. “Calm down. Then, you should talk to her.”

“But she’s on a date!” Tsutomu actually looks pained; as if this is the most difficult decision he has ever faced, torn between speaking his mind, or letting his sister resume her date, unwitting of her brother’s eagle eye.

“You were ready to commit manslaughter less than a minute ago,” Kei points out. 

Tsutomu doesn’t go red, but he does look properly admonished. Sheepish, even. “I know,” he admits, “and I still want to have a _chat_ with him—but,” and this he says with great reluctance, “you had a point earlier. I guess I can’t baby her forever.”

Kei wonders what’d brought on the major shift in character, and looks away from Tsutomu, confident he won’t take the moment of distraction as a chance to dash like a madman, to see what’s going on with Temari. She’s actually laughing, smiling and genuinely immersed in her date, glowing with all the timid bashfulness of a girl on her first date with joy emanating off her in waves. Kei can’t see the boy’s face, but he can see him rubbing his nape, and imagines maybe he’s just as shy and nervous, but happy, too.

“How about you talk to her when she gets home, then?” Kei suggests.

“Oh,” Tsutomu says lamely, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

_Of course you didn’t,_ Kei doesn’t say. “Come on. She’s fine, let’s go home.”

As if on cue, Tsutomu’s stomach grumbles. Loudly, like a monster roaring for food. Kei stares at him, completely bemused; Tsutomu blushes down to his roots. “I haven’t had breakfast,” he mutters sullenly.

“Did you bring your wallet.”

“…No?”

Kei’s glare is almost enough to put Tsutomu’s own, the one he’d directed towards his sister’s boyfriend, to shame.

⁕

“Thanks for the meal,” Tsutomu says, though he says this with reluctance. Kei would’ve liked a little more gratitude from the person he’d just bought _steak_ for, but he could allow some leeway: The circumstances are odd, for one opponent to treat another to brunch.

“Just eat it before your steak gets cold,” Kei sighs, and takes the first bite of his sandwich. The tomato pops in a single bite, its sweet and sour juice washing over his tongue. He has the decency to finish chewing and swallowing down his bite before he speaks again. “So, what are you going to do with your sister?”

Kei wouldn’t say he’s invested, but maybe a small part of him cares. Kei as he is now, seventeen and ready for his final year of high school, is a far cry from the Kei he was when him and Tsutomu first met; a little mellowed out around the ages, less cold cynicism and more room-temperature realism. The old Kei wouldn’t even have bothered helping Tsutomu find his sister (that is to say, the Kei from the beginning of his first year), while the new Kei is reluctant to do it, but he’d done it anyway, and even bought lunch instead of having lunch bought for _him_ as compensation for his time.

He hopes Yamaguchi will never hear about this. He gets enough relentless teasing for going soft already.

“I want to make sure she ends her relationship!” Tsutomu says, perhaps a little too excitedly. The family from the booth adjacent to them give Tsutomu odd looks. It takes all of Kei’s self control not to sink into the surface and pretend he isn’t there. Physically, he is—mentally, he’s in his room, listening to music and _not_ with Goshiki Tsutomu embarrassing him. “She’s too young for boyfriends, and she was probably just curious about going on dates! Once she’s finished this one, I bet she’ll tell him there won’t be any future dates, and they’ll break up.”

Tsutomu’s face gets progressively darker with glee as he continues his tangent, so much that by the end of it, he’s smiling like a plotting villain; Kei wonders if he’ll cackle too, for the dramatics. 

“Good luck,” Kei finally says, not knowing what else there is for him to state. Tsutomu is setting himself up for failure, because kids, especially at age twelve, are starting to undergo their rebellious phase—they don’t want to be controlled. Kei doubts Temari _could_ be controlled, considering she’d gone so far as to sneak out of the house behind Tsutomu’s back for her date. He almost thinks about saying all of this, but Kei, as previously established, is a bastard—and he’s curious enough to see how this plays out.

That means there’s always the chance for Tsutomu to start crying for days (physically impossible, but Kei can see Tsutomu managing this feat) because his sister refused to listen, and wouldn’t that be terribly entertaining?

“I’ll be sure to tell you everything,” Tsutomu says solemnly. The effect is ruined by the barbecue sauce all over his lips; some had even gone to his cheek. “I’ll text you.”

“You don’t have my email.”

“I do, though?” Upon Kei’s look of confusion, he explains, “Training camp, from first year? I got everyone’s emails.”

Kei doesn’t remember giving Tsutomu his email address, but then again, he doesn’t remember who else he’d given (or not given) his email to, on that final day of the mock camp. Everything had been a blur, for the most part, with the exception of Hinata’s uninvinted entrance; his face when they lined up. Kei can’t forget that, as that’d been the only time his rage had bubbled past their precarious confine, boiled to its tipping point.

He has never had another angry outburst since then. Bouts of passive aggressiveness, surely, but never hot, burning anger. Yamaguchi thinks it’s because Kei’s getting nicer, but Kei would bet it’s just because he’s numb.

“Try texting me,” Kei says. Tsutomu does, pulling out the latest model of the newest iPhone from his bag. So he’s a rich kid—figures, though that doesn’t account for his current state of table manners.

A few moments later, Tsutomu stops tapping on his screen; at the same time, Kei’s phone rings. He opens his phone, because his is a simple fliphone compared to Tsutomu’s fancy smartphone, and raises a lone, bemused brow at the message.

**From** : goshikitsutomu@gmail.co.jp

**To** : tsukishima_kei927@gmail.co.jp

**Subject** : [no subject]

Four-eyes :P

Kei looks up from his phone with a glower. Tsutomu, decidedly, does not look as smug as he’d initially been.

“Save my email in your contacts!” Tsutomu stammers, trying to save face. 

“I’ll do that it later,” Kei says as calmly as he can. 

They let the conversation null and resume their meals, with Kei finishing later than Tsutomu, despite Tsutomu’s plate being bigger and fuller. Kei _does_ eat slowly, though; and while Tsutomu doesn’t scarf his food down unlike some of Kei’s teammates, he’s a hungry man, and eats with more vigor than what is entailed in proper etiquette. 

“Do you want to know why I moved?” Tsutomu suddenly asks, once Kei has finished his meal and is wiping the last crumbs from the corners of his mouth. Kei shakes his head, still trying to get the measly crumbs off his lips, and later, wiping them from his pants, having them fall down to the floor. “My parents split.”

Kei’s smile is crooked. “If it makes you feel better, mine did too.”

It’d been less of a divorce and more of a ‘dad running off one day to be with his mistress with only a note to account for his sins’, but Kei’s not divulging that. Way too personal. “Who are you living with?” he asks, because he realizes he’d never found out about that. The Goshiki guardian has been downright _elusive_ compared to their children

“Dad, but he’s not home much.” That explains why the siblings—or at least, Temari is—often frequent Kei’s house. “I’m not excited for the schoolyear. I mean, I am! I’ll get to be ace and kick your Karasuno butt, but.” His face falls. “I don’t want to wake up extra early just to get to school.”

“Aren’t there dorms in Shiratorizawa?” Kei points out. That was one of the things he’d noticed, and still remembers, from his time in the training camp.

“I asked for permission to live off-campus. I didn’t, before my parents…” Tsutomu trails off, and his eyes, usually so lively either with sorrow or joy, are empty, staring at a distant memory. “But then they did, and I know dad could never take care of Temari himself.”

It’s weird, Kei thinks, that Tsutomu is opening up to him—the enemy—in the middle of a crowded diner during the day, waiters bustling around them and patrons coming and going with every passed second. There is nothing in this setting that would inspire vulnerability; but it did something to Tsutomu, that ‘something’ being whatever it is Kei doesn’t care to think too hard on, and now Kei realizes he’s humanised the opponent. It’s not a bad thing. They’re only enemies on the court; there are no real stakes at play. Still, and this is a realization that discomforts him, it’s strange, knowing that the person he constantly plays against on the other side of the net faces these struggles he never otherwise would’ve known had fate not played her cards this way.

It’s weird, but then again, life is weird in general.

“And how’s that treating you?” Kei asks; tries not to sound _too_ mean, which is a surprising consideration, coming from him, he who is terrible with emotions and a brute with others’ sensitivity. 

Tsutomu leans forward, hands gripping the table, and whispers, “I found my first grey hair this morning,” like it should be enough of an answer—and it is.

Kei makes a show out of squinting at Tsutomu’s hair, trying to find the single, odd strand. Despite his glasses, Kei has never been good at finding Waldo. “I can’t see it under the horrible haircut, but I’m sure it’s there.”

“You’re an asshole,” Tsutomu laughs, leaving Kei to stare at him, because that much was supposed to be obvious. Common knowledge, even. Daichi did always say he had a personality problem. “Can I ask you something?” 

Wordlessly, Kei gestures for him to go on. 

“Have you done any of your summer homework yet?” Tsutomu looks at everywhere _but_ Kei. Kei wouldn’t be surprised if he suddenly burst into innocuous whistles. 

“I started on some,” Kei responds warily, “why?”

“You wear glasses, so you’ve gotta be smart, right?”

“…Goshiki-san, I don’t think it works like that,” Kei tries to say.

“Could you help me do my work too? Tutor me!”

Kei is getting horrible flashbacks to that time before the Tokyo training camp back in his first year. He’d had his fill of tutoring idiots—thank God for Yachi, who was there to tutor Hinata and Kageyama instead of him after she joined. 

“No,” Kei immediately answers, keeping his face flat even as Tsutomu’s falls.

“I know we haven’t known each other that long, but you’re the only one who can help me!” Tsutomu begs. He doesn’t make a show out of bowing, but he does place his hands clasped together in front of his chest, shaking them. Kei doesn’t even dare looking around to see if anyone’s staring at them: He is never going to be seen in public with Tsutomu again. “I have to keep my grades up so I can stay in the starting lineup, and usually I’d ask my roommate to help me, but he’s not here now and self-studying is hard!”

In the end, Kei says yes just to get him to shut up. It’d been a last-ditch effort from getting them kicked out from the establishment; the manager was six seconds away from doing it herself.

⁕

Tsutomu comes home to an empty house. His sister hasn’t returned from her date, while his dad is nowhere to be seen—he’s been making himself scarce the past few days for reasons Tsutomu doesn’t know much less understand, but if he had to wager a guess, he would bet his haircut on his dad going out drinking. He found beer stocked in the cooler last week, even though the cooler was meant to be a place to store his and Temari’s assortment of smoothies.

A glance at the clock tells him it’s several minutes from five. Dad won’t be back until tonight, but if Temari isn’t home by six, Tsutomu _will_ go back to the mall himself and drag her home—his cute sister is too young to be out so late! 

He lays down on the couch, turning on the TV and letting it run an old show he has no interest in watching. Instead, Tsutomu opens his phone; hesitates only for a second before he composes a message to Kei.

**To** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

**From** : Goshiki Tsutomu

**Subject** : Today

Thanks for helping me out today!! And paying for my meal. I’ll pay you back eventually.

It’s almost humiliating, how he doesn’t even bother to put down his phone while he waits for Kei’s response. Tsutomu glares holes at his inbox, waiting for a new message to appear. If he glared harder and glares could burn, he might’ve eviscerated his phone within the first ten seconds. 

Replying takes Kei a little over ten minutes, in which time Tsutomu had begun gnawing on his lower lip, anxiety coiling (and then uncoiling) in his belly.

**To** : Goshiki Tsutomu

**From** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

**Subject** : Re: Today

You’re welcome. You’d better pay me back, your steak wasn’t cheap.

Tsutomu stares at his phone with befuddlement. He’d expected a message consisting of… more, considering it’d taken Kei ten minutes to reply. Then again, Tsutomu is a fast texter, and one who forgets, sometimes, that not everyone would respond as fast as he does.

 **To** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

 **From** : Goshiki Tsutomu

 **Subject** : For sure!!!!

What do you want in exchange? Do you know any places with good food I could treat you to???

This time, Kei’s response doesn’t take him as long to send. Tsutomu only burns holes through his phone for _five_ minutes this time instead of ten—what an accomplishment!

 **To** : Goshiki Tsutomu

 **From** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

 **Subject** : Re: For sure!!!!

There’s a dessert shop, I guess.

Sweets? Kei hadn’t seemed like the type to enjoy them, much less enough to invite Tsutomu out to a dessert cafe, but they hadn’t known each other for long. There’s still much of Kei he doesn’t know about yet—and he can’t wait to see the look on his teammates’ faces when he tells them he has exclusive intel on one of Karasuno’s most troublesome players!

…Although, maybe telling them Kei likes dessert isn’t as much as the useful intel they’d make use of during games. So that was a flaw in the plan.

 **To** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

 **From** : Goshiki Tsutomu

 **Subject** : Re: Re: For sure!!!

It’s a date! :D

His own message takes him several seconds to sink in—and then Tsutomu’s gaping, quickly typing out a follow-up message, because _what the hell, self_?

 **To** : Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

 **From** : Goshiki Tsutomu

 **Subject** : Re: Re: Re: For sure!!!!

I DIDN’T MEAN IT AS A _DATE_ DATE I’M SO SORRY IT SLIPPED OUT

Tsutomu doesn’t throw his phone at the wall, but it’s a close thing.

Fortunately, his phone and wallet are saved by Temari’s entrance—who freezes at the doorway when she sees her brother in the living room, catching her in the act of sneaking in.

“Um,” Temari squeaks, any semblance of a glowing blush flushing down the drain, a deathly pallor overtaking her face, “I can explain?”

Anger is Tsutomu’s first instinct. He wants to lecture his sister and tell her just _all_ the reasons why dating is inadvisable, much less with a boy who could very well break her heart for fun—but then Kei’s advice rings in his head, about baby birds leaving their nest, and Tsutomu’s shoulders sag. A look at Temari’s face is enough to tell him his siter is terrified enough by this confrontation as it is. The last thing Tsutomu wants to do is to accidentally get in her bad graces, not when she’s the only thing he has keeping him in their bird’s cage of a house.

“Explain,” Tsutomu says, more tired and wary than angry, “and make sure to tell me _why_ you thought leaving your phone off was a good idea.” Temari goes even paler.

⁕

“I see your sister’s still one piece,” is the first thing Kei says to Tsutomu’s face, after Tsutomu had shown up to take him out for strawberry shortcake. Temari trails behind Tsutomu, still in one piece, not downcast in the slightest. “Is her boyfriend still alive, though?”

“How do you know about my boyfriend?” Temari asks, face gone red at the reminder of her summer romance. Kei would be more embarrassed about a twelve year-old having more romantic experience than him if he cared.

“Your brother didn’t tell you? He asked me to come along when he was looking for you.” Kei thoroughly enjoys embarrassing Tsutomu, though, and seeing him stutter and fluster after Kei’s ousted his scheme is enough to make his morning. Kei is many things, one of them vindictive. “What’s his name?”

Temari blushes even harder. She doesn’t even answer Kei’s response, and before Kei knows it, she’s kicked off her shoes and run inside the house—calling out for Kei’s mother. 

“Look what you did,” Tsutomu hisses. 

“It’s not my fault you didn’t tell her,” Kei says, as innocently as he can. “Did you bring your homework?”

In response, Tsutomu proudly shows off a stack of papers, opening his bag to lift them next to his face. “Yup! Are you sure the cafe won’t be too crowded?”

“It’ll be fine,” Kei says, instead of admitting he’s a regular who’s already memorized the days when the place is less crowded than usual. “I’m not paying for your train fare.”

Tsutomu bristles. “That was _one_ time!”

Unlike Hinata, Tsutomu, despite his bouts of shouting in place of talking, is quiet on the train. Kei can see him being the perfect grandson: Guiding old ladies to empty seats, giving up his when he spots somebody who needs it. Kei wears his headphones, listening to his summer playlist, watching his companion from the corner of his eye. Tsutomu is nothing like the person Kei had expected him to be off the court—not as intense, softer, maybe even kinder—but it’s not like Kei had really known what to expect.

He tugs on Tsutomu’s sleeve when they arrive at their stop and misses the way Tsutomu blushes, Kei too preoccupied with guiding them off the train in time and into the platform.

When Kei forgets to let go of Tsutomu’s sleeve, Tsutomu reminds him with a poke to his back.

“What?”

“You’re still holding my hand,” Tsutomu reminds him, staring down at his arm.

Kei doesn’t let go of Tsutomu like he burns, because that’d be too rude, even for him; he _does_ let go quickly, though, and hopes the summer heat can explain for the flush in his cheeks.

“Sorry,” is Kei’s quick apology. “Try not to get lost in the crowd.”

“What, you won’t come look for me if I do?”

“Yeah. You’re not a kid, I’m not out babysitting.”

Tsutomu doesn’t get lost. They arrive at the cafe quickly, sun waving at them from the concrete. Kei’s usual booth is open and he slides into his seat, Tsutomu the spot across his.

“So, what subjects do you need help with?”

As Tsutomu spreads out his homework, Kei makes note on the papers he’d brought. Math, Japanese literature, and physics—it wasn’t a lot; at least Kei’s workload this time isn’t as monstrous as it was, once.

“These are the subjects I’m having the most trouble with,” Tsutomu explains, ruffling a hand through his hair sheepishly. “Honestly, I’m not that great at the other subjects either—English and sports are all I’m good at.”

“You have good English grades?” Kei asks, a little surprised. He doesn’t look the type.

“Of course!” Tsutomu puffs his chest up proudly. “I grew up watching cartoons in English. I mean, I don’t understand grammar _theoretically_ , but I know what works and what doesn’t.”

“And how do you know that?”

Tsutomu points at the center of his chest. Kei just barely restrains himself from pointing out that’s not where his heart is. “Feeling, duh. If it feels right, it probably is; and if it feels wrong, then it doesn’t work,” he says proudly.

“Uh…” Kei tries his best not to sound too unimpressed. “Right.”

Later, Kei finds out that to his credit, Tsutomu isn’t as dense as his previous students. He actually listens to Kei’s explanations and what he has to say—even if putting what he’d learned into practice is a nearly impossible task.

The math problem he’s trying now is the third of the same formulas as the previous ones, and Kei watches Tsutomu as he works, brows furrowing in frustration despite the formula already out in full display. He shows off his work to Kei once he’s finished, cringing with the surety of someone who knows he’s wrong.

“You’re wrong,” Kei points out, circling where Tsutomu had stumbled on his calculations. “Be more careful with the numbers—and don’t think too hard about the formula when you can just look at what you’ve already written for the previous questions.”

Frustration brews on Tsutomu’s face, but instead of tearing his homework in half, he forces himself to nod instead. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You keep saying that,” Kei drolls, “but you keep making the same mistakes.” Tsutomu is silent, staring down at his lap. “Are you even trying?”

Mean as it might sound, Kei isn’t saying this for the sake of sounding it; he’s asking genuine questions, maybe broiled with some pettiness, but no actual malice. He doesn’t take into account Tsutomu not knowing him well enough to not realize that.

“I am,” Tsutomu finally says, and when he looks at Kei, his eyes are a little red. “I’m doing all I can—it’s just _hard_ , okay? I’m stuck in college prep classes when my grades are almost hopeless, and I’m always trying to make sure my grades improve, but the information just doesn’t want to stick in my head and it’s like—like trying to catch smoke! Or getting sand out your sandals.”

Kei’s eyes widen; before he gets the chance to say anything, Tsutomu pushes on, “I’m sorry for wasting your time. I just thought. I thought this’d be it,” he says, voice going quiet, “and I could finally drill the information into my head—finally have a shot at actually going to college.”

“You could always get in on a sports scholarship,” Kei points out, not gently, but not brusque either.

“I know, but I need backup plans, too,” Tsutomu says. If it surprises Kei that the boy had put so much thought into this—especially when compared to some of Kei’s own teammates—he doesn’t say it. “Listen, Tsukishima-san, I’m thankful for all your help. But it’s okay if you don’t want to keep tutoring me. I could just,” Tsutomu hesitates, face scrunching up, “learn through Khan Academy or something. Or get a Chegg subscription.”

This is it. This is Kei’s out, a way to back from their agreement without guilt on his part. Kei knows he should grasp it by its reins and never look back, but he hesitates. It doesn’t feel right. Not when Tsutomu looks so quiet, so broken—so different, and not the kind of different that blooms something entirely new and wonderful.

“I’ll keep helping you,” Kei says. He can’t believe it himself. “But I refuse to be a nice tutor.”

“I didn’t know you _had_ the ability to be a nice tutor,” Tsutomu says, starting to snicker; some of the light flooding back in his eyes, in the form of hope. Kei wants to look away and finds he can’t. “I’ll work harder on the next question!” Tsutomu proclaims in earnest.

He solves the next problem in one try, beaming proudly at Kei, so Kei must’ve said something right.

⁕

“Tsukki!”

Kei already knows who’s standing outside his bedroom without looking. If he can’t recognize Yamaguchi’s ‘Tsukki!’, he’s not sure if he should be able to recognize anything else.

It’s refreshing to have someone who _isn’t_ a Goshiki visiting him this summer. Kei opens the door to his room and finds himself with an armful of Yamaguchi, who has no qualms with hugging his best friend after not seeing each other for two weeks.

Kei hugs him back awkwardly, patting Yamaguchi’s back like one would console a bawling toddler without any previous parental experience. When Yamaguchi finally lets him go, he’s beaming up at Kei with a brilliant grin; a far cry from how reserved he’d been on their first year.

“Why didn’t you text me back?” Yamaguchi complains, sounding genuinely hurt. Kei winces. “I wanted to tell you about all of the volleyball cub’s plans for the next year! Yachi and I worked hard on it.”

Yamaguchi blushes, eyes slightly glazed over with daydreams, when he mentions their manager. Kei has to wonder if either of them had realized their crushes. He doesn’t want to meddle, but at this point, it’s beginning to look like he has no other option—not unless he wants an uncomfortable last year of club activities filled by their _pining_.

“Does she know you’ve been doodling ‘Yachi Yamaguchi’ on your notebook yet?”

“Tsukki!” Yamaguchi hits his arm. It doesn’t sting and Kei doesn’t bother acting like it does; he just stares down his best friend, bemused by the lack of confessions. “I don’t like her that way,” he tries to say, even as his laughter is the fakest Kei’s ever heard it sound.

“Sure,” Kei tries not to sound too annoyed, “whatever you say. Why are you here?”

A flash of hurt flickers across Yamaguchi’s face. Kei’s too late to retract his words. “I just missed hanging out with you,” Yamaguchi says. His voice is small—unsure.

Kei doesn’t apologize because he doesn’t know how. The best he can do is make up for the things he has already said. “Just come in,” Kei finally decides to say, so Yamaguchi does.

The timid silence is broken when Yamaguchi sees Tsutomu’s shirt, an eye-catching purple, draped over Kei’s chair. “I didn’t know you liked purple,” Yamaguchi says with caution. When Kei doesn’t stop him, he picks it up, and only realizes the shirt is too small to be Kei’s when he’s holding it right in front of Kei’s torso. “This isn’t yours.”

“It isn’t mine,” Kei agrees, and snatches it from Yamaguchi’s grasp. He tidies it into a clean, quick fold, even if the shirt is already bent and crumpled.

“You have someone else’s shirt in your room?” Yamaguchi asks, suddenly looking a little too interested. He doesn’t look like a kicked puppy anymore, but Kei has to wonder if it was worth the price. “Tsukki, you sly dog!”

“It’s not like that!” Kei’s quick to shut down, hoping he looks more angry than flustered. He doesn’t think about Tsutomu that way, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be embarrassed by the implications of having his shirt. “Quit making assumptions.”

“Then why do you have his clothes in your room?”

He’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. “I’ve been tutoring someone. He stays over sometimes,” Kei finally admits, looking away when Yamaguchi gains a wicked grin. “He sleeps on the floor!”

“So _this_ is why you haven’t been texting me?”

“No.” Kei shakes his head. “I haven’t been texting you because there was nothing to talk about, Yamaguchi.”

“Are you kidding? This is _plenty_ to talk about, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi says, snickering. Whoever thinks Yamaguchi is a saint clearly has no idea how he acts around the people he’s comfortable with. “Why are you even tutoring someone, anyway? I thought you told me you don’t have the patience for that.”

“It just happened.” Kei has no fucking clue how it even happened either, if he’s being honest. 

“Do I know who it is?”

It’d be remarkably easy to lie right now. Yamaguchi doesn’t know about Tsutomu being his new neighbour, and Kei could always keep his hands clean from letting Yamaguchi even clue into it. Still: Even if the prospect of lying is tempting (and easy), Kei’s never been able to lie from Yamaguchi as opposed to keeping secrets. 

He mourns the loss of his eardrums beforehand.

“It’s Shiratorizawa’s ace.”

Predictably, Yamaguchi is surprised. Surprised enough he doesn’t immediately yell, or even say anything. He’s just rooted in his spot, mouth agape, eyeballs bulging out of his head.

“Oi, you’ll catch flies,” Kei reprimands; only to wish he hadn’t, because after reclaiming his bearings, Yamaguchi’s reaction is to _interrogate_ him.

“How did you two even meet?!” Yamaguchi asks, and before Kei’s given the chance to answer, continues with his onslaught of questions. “Is he treating you well? Is he nice? Are you _dating_?”

“First of all.” Kei has to forcibly shut Yamaguchi’s mouth with his palm. “He’s my new neighbour, that’s how we met; he treats me just fine; he’s not as bad as his haircut; and we are _not_ dating, nor do I plan on dating him.”

“Why not?”

“Why would I?”

“You’re tutoring him and you _hate_ tutoring people,” Yamaguchi says, like it’s the most obvious fact in the world. In some ways, it is.

“We’re just friends,” Kei pushes. “There’s nothing more to it.”

That’s the time Kei’s phone chooses to chime with the notification of a new message. He briefly looks at Yamaguchi, who sighs, and makes a vague gesture allowing him to check his inbox.

The universe must have something against him, because it’s Tsutomu.

**From** : Goshiki Tsutomu

**To** :Tsukishima Kei

**Subject** : Dinner

Temari and I are coming over for dinner!!! I’ll arrive in a few minutes, could you open the door for us?

His timing couldn’t be worse. 

“Who’s that?” Yamaguchi’s wriggling his brows like he already knows the answer. Kei hates that his answer _is_ right this time. “Wait, it’s him?”

He runs behind Kei as Kei leaves for the front door. Even as Kei doesn’t spare a single look at his back, he already knows which shit-eating grin Yamaguchi’s chosen to wear this time. 

Kei and Yamaguchi once had a conversation when they discussed friend jealousy. It isn’t a conversation Kei likes recalling. Yamaguchi never had to face much of this, with Kei’s personality being a brilliant friendship repellant. Kei, on the other hand, who had once viewed Yamaguchi as his only friend while Yamaguchi was nice enough to attract others into his orbit—it hadn’t been a fun conversation for Kei. A realization, maybe, but fun? Definitely not.

With Yamaguchi practically peering past Kei’s shoulders to squint at Tsutomu, Kei briefly wonders if this is friend jealousy for Yamaguchi. And then he sees the beginnings of the smirk, and realizes: This is not friend jealousy.

This is the look Yamaguchi wears when he’s up to something and that is even worse.

“Goshiki-san, right?” Yamaguchi states this before Kei even opens his mouth. Before _Tsutomu_ had opened his mouth, staring at the two of them with an odd look Kei can’t place. He looks like a confused, annoyed cat, one who’d been strung out in the rain to bathe. “Tsukki was just telling me _all_ about you.”

“Shut up, Yamaguchi,” Kei hisses. If he’d nudged his elbow at Yamaguchi’s ribs, that is between him, Yamaguchi, and God. (And Kei doubts God exists, so technically, this is only between him and Yamaguchi.) “I can’t tutor you today,” this he says to Tsutomu in a slightly nicer tone. Even if his face is still pinched with annoyance.

“What about me? What did he say about me?” Temari pipes up, drawing Yamaguchi’s attention to her short figure for the first time since the beginning of the conversation. Kei wouldn’t doubt if that was the first time he’d even noticed someone else was there. Yamaguchi gets like that when he’s too occupied with something; a one-track mind. 

“You’re, uh…” Yamaguchi looks to Kei for help. Kei, vindication incarnate, pointedly ignores him. 

“I’m his younger sister!” Temari huffs. She doesn’t look very pleased. Yamaguchi only begins panicking at the thought of him angering a girl—a prepubescent one, at that. Must be hard for his morality.

“R-Right!” Yamaguchi’s stutter only comes out when he’s nervous. Angry twelve year-old girls invoke his anxiety. “I’m sorry!”

Yamaguchi snickers under his breath and shoots teasing looks at Kei and Tsutomu during the entirety of dinner. Kei has to shut him up by kicking him in the shin under the table. Other than the petty joy that brings, it’s as much a source of comfort and amusement for him to see Yamaguchi paling whenever Temari even _narrows an eye_ at his direction. 

Kei might be the one getting teased by his best friend, but at least he’s not the one who jumps in his seat because of a twelve year-old. That’s a stingier blow to someone’s pride.

“So, um.” There’d been the sound of plates and quiet chewing before, as the conversation had lulled, only to have it revived by the younger Goshiki. “I’m going to the amusement park with my boyfriend tomorrow, and brother wanted to come along.” At this, her forehead wrinkles. “To keep an eye on me. Do you want to come too?” She looks to Kei, who in turn, looks around to see she isn’t trying to look at anyone else. There’s only him. “You could keep him company while I have my date!”

No. No is the only plausible answer. If Kei thought what he’d been doing recently was babysitting, this is even worse. 

“He’d love to!” Yamaguchi interjects before Kei gets the chance to reject the offer. Kei kicks him harder in the shins and Yamaguchi barely holds back a pained wince. 

“Yamaguchi’s free to tag along too,” Kei says. There’s no way he’s going to deal with this alone. Yamaguchi stares at him with widened eyes, silently mouthing ‘no’, and Kei is all too happy to ignore him. “He loves the haunted houses.”

Yamaguchi actually looks queasy at the thought of the haunted houses. Kei would feel bad if he could; but he couldn’t, so instead, he settles for a self-satisfied smirk.

“We’ll all go together then!” Temari cheers, and raises her glass of cold ocha for a toast only her brother meets.

⁕

Tsutomu knows this isn’t a date.

It’s not a date between him and Kei, at least. Temari’s head has gone to the moon since Tsutomu begrudgingly agreed to let her go on an amusement park date with her boyfriend (who are both _too young_ to be _dating_ ), uncaring of the three seventeen year-old boys she’d strung along for chaperoning and third-four-fifth wheeling. Tsutomu knows this isn’t a date; him and Kei are friends, and he’d even brought his other friend with him. Knowing all of this, he still takes his time precariously picking the pieces of his outfit. Standing in front of his wardrobe for at least fifteen minutes, nearly jumping out of his skin when Temari whines in front of his door to hurry.

It’s not a date, he repeats to himself. Even if Kei is unexpectedly nice (at times), unexpectedly more handsome up close, unexpectedly charming, unex—nope, Tsutomu, don’t think about it. Don’t think about your crush, he begs in the confines of his head, especially not when it’s a hopeless venture and he’s just setting himself up for a broken heart.

…Even that itself is assuming Tsutomu would do anything leading up to Kei breaking his heart, and so far, the only thing Tsutomu has excelled at is trying not to make his crush so obvious, even when he constantly clings to Kei’s side. Like a leech; or an over-persistent fly with sticky strawberry ice cream. 

“Hurry up!” Temari’s begun to rap her knuckles against the door. Tsutomu doesn’t doubt her willingness to open the door without him permitting her entry if she gets too impatient. He ends up picking the first shirt he sees, a purple monstrosity the Shiratorizawa team had bought together for an outing last year, and buttons his jeans in record time. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to tame his hair into something more presentable.

“Okay, okay!” Tsutomu punches his keys and wallet inside his pockets and opens the door with a bang; its hinges hit the wall. “You could’ve given me _some_ more time,” he sulks. 

Temari makes a face once she sees what he’s wearing. “That purple shirt is ugly.”

“I know it is,” Tsutomu bemoans. 

“But I’m not giving you the time to change!” Temari beams, grasping his hand to tug him along. And then they are off.

They’d agreed to meet at the station. The sky is clear and sunny, smiling down on them like an overly optimistic romcom protagonist. Go forth, the sky seems to tell him, and impress your date. Tsutomu sticks his tongue out at the sky when Temari isn’t looking, telling them off because _this isn’t a date_. 

“Kei nii-chan!” Temari squeals the moment she even spots the familiar head of blond hair. Tsutomu nearly tells her that she could be wrong, and she might be running forward to hug a complete stranger who’s dyed their hair. Only it turns out she’s right, and the person she’s surged forward to cling on their leg is Kei, who is trying to peel her off his foot. Behind him, Yamaguchi snickers at his fate.

“Temari, get off him.” Tsutomu tries pulling her off, but she keeps clinging persistently, much like a koala to a tree. Or bubblegum stuck on hair. “We’ll miss the train,” he tries. Temari gets off of Kei with haste.

“I’m sorry for her.” Tsutomu’s gaze doesn’t linger a second too long at the shirt Kei’s wearing. He hadn’t even tried, opting to wear a regular white shirt Tsutomu’s seen him wear around the house a handful of times. Of course he wouldn’t try—it’s not a date. 

“Gotten used to it,” Kei mutters, attempting that aloof look he often wears when he’s trying to say, _see? I don’t care_. Tsutomu used to think it was annoying, when he’d only seen it on the opposite side of the court. Now he thinks it looks pretty damn cool. 

Yamaguchi pats Kei’s back. “Nice, Tsukki!”

“Shut up, Yamaguchi. I didn’t even do anything.”

On their way to the park, Kei puts on his headphones and promptly ignores the rest of their party. Tsutomu’s chest sinks a little, the world around him fading slightly in colour. He tries not to care too much, even if he’d been planning to talk to Kei on the way. Instead, Tsutomu is drawn into a conversation with Yamaguchi and Temari. Yamaguchi asks Temari questions about her boyfriend, Temari blushes and stammers through the questioning, and Tsutomu offers his two cents by looking a little more murderous every time the boy’s name is so much as mentioned.

Tsutomu’s glare only grows more hostile in nature once they arrive at their stop and he actually sees Temari running off to greet him. Both Kei and Yamaguchi have to stop him from coming over there himself, Yamaguchi gripping on his left arm while Kei holds his right.

“Come on, Goshiki-san, let’s go line up,” Yamaguchi begins attempting to pull him towards the ticketing line. Tsutomu resists his grip and tries stepping towards the chatting couple; Kei grips him a little harder.

“Let her make her own life experiences,” Kei reminds him. Tsutomu doesn’t have his fight drained out of him (it doesn’t work like that), but he does stop struggling so hard to shake off their hold on him. Kei takes this as the chance to put all his strength into his hold and drags him towards the line, afterwards blocking off all his exits by standing closely behind him, while Yamaguchi blocks the path in front of him.

This leaves Tsutomu with a different problem. Kei is standing too close, his chest practically pressing against Tsutomu’s back, and Tsutomu’s heart begins thudding too loudly in his ears; the way it does when he’s playing a horror game and he’s too scared of triggering a jumpscare, except this time, _this_ is the jumpscare.

He even misses when the employee tells him to stick out his hand for a wristband and a stamp; only remembers when Kei not-so-subtly nudges him, and that leaves him jumping like a fish out of water.

“Oh. Right,” Tsutomu stammers, trying to push the red in his face as embarrassment.

When he arrives on the other side of the gate, him and Yamaguchi waiting for Kei, Yamaguchi looks at him like he can see right through him.

The Karasuno members are terrifying.

“Let’s take a selfie!” Yamaguchi says once Kei’s joined them. Before Kei can voice his protests, Tsutomu has already pulled out his phone—the smartphone with the front-facing camera—and hands it to Kei with a nervous, if expectant, grin. 

“You have the longest hands,” Tsutomu explains. 

Kei’s eye twitches. He takes Tsutomu’s phone anyway, fiddles with it for a moment like someone who’s never held a smartphone in his life before (considering his phone’s model, maybe he hasn’t), and finally manages to find the camera app. 

“Smile,” Kei says monotonously, and clicks the button to take the picture before neither Tsutomu nor Yamaguchi are ready. He attempts to give the phone back to Tsutomu, who refuses to take it.

“We weren’t ready! Give us some cues!”

“Yeah! What he said!” Yamaguchi parrots.

Kei, outnumbered, reluctantly tries again. “Fine. One, two…” 

Yamaguchi throws up a victory sign, standing next to Tsutomu with a beam brilliantly placed on his face. Tsutomu grins at the camera, eyes crinkling, an arm slung around Kei. Kei himself is barely smiling, but he isn’t frowning or glaring at the camera either, so Tsutomu considers this a win.

Tsutomu doesn’t set it as his wallpaper, but he zooms in on him and Kei side-by-side; heart swelling. He hugs the phone to his chest for a moment and tries not to look as giddy as he feels, like a boy with a schoolyard crush, or someone experiencing the symptoms of puppy love.

⁕

“We should ride the rollercoaster!” Yamaguchi suggests, pointing at the map in Kei’s hands. The rollercoaster he points at is at the center of the park. The little blurbs offered on the map tells them that this is _the_ rollecoaster—the behemoth, the main attraction, the works. 

Kei is the first to notice when Tsutomu begins looking nervous.

“Maybe we should save that for last,” Kei says, even as his gaze keeps flickering between the map and Tsutomu, who is by his side, increasingly paling.

Yamaguchi doesn’t notice; and thank God for that, because Kei can only imagine the kind of teasing they’d have to put up with. Even if there is no reason for teasing other than riling them up: just as Kei has begun softening around the edges, Yamaguchi has gotten more devious through the years.

“You’re right, Tsukki,” Yamaguchi murmurs, eyes scanning the page for more rides they could try first. “Obviously we should save the biggest ride for last! You’re so smart, Tsukki!”

Kei grunts in acknowledgment. He nudges Tsutomu, who seems to snap to life. “What do you want to ride first?” he asks.

“Um.” Tsutomu tugs the paper closer to him. Kei lets him, watching as Tsutomu squints, and wonders how he sees through those bangs of his. “The haunted house?”

Yamaguchi looks at Tsutomu like he’s been stabbed in the back. 

They go to the haunted house.

Yamaguchi screams at every rustle of the wind, and screams even louder at the scares the houses brings. Kei is stuck on ‘make sure Yamaguchi doesn’t faint in public duty’; a heavy task. Tsutomu is the only one who really gets to enjoy the haunted house, never once looking afraid of the horrors it has to offer.

“I’m really good at handling horror,” Tsutomu says, after Yamaguchi practically leaps into Kei’s arms after a hand reaches for him from the dark, and Kei notices Tsutomu hadn’t even flinched. Tsutomu glows with pride at the unprompted admission.

When they get out of the haunted house, Yamaguchi is ten shades paler; he could even pass off as one of the vampires that’d tried scaring them inside. “I need to go to the bathroom.” Yamaguchi runs to the bathroom. He leaves behind a bemused Kei and a nervous Tsutomu (although Kei doesn’t know that.)

Kei looks at the map and tries to find other attractions near their current spot. His eyes land on a drop tower. “We could go for this one next,” he suggests, showing the ride to Tsutomu. 

“Can we not?” Tsutomu asks—no—pleads. 

“Do you not like heights?”

“I have acrophobia,” Tsutomu’s voice drops when he admits this; and then he cringes, skirting away from Kei, as if he’s worried Kei might laugh at him. Kei doesn’t laugh. Kei is an asshole, but he’s not so terrible he would make fun of someone’s phobias. 

And then Kei gets an idea.

“Do you want to try.” Kei makes vague hand notions in the air. Pretends he’s Hinata, for a moment, with all his gesturing and flailing. “Conquering your fears?”

“By riding the drop tower?” Tsutomu looks like he’s seen the ghost of something so grotesque he couldn’t put it into words.

“I was thinking the ferris wheel.” Kei’s index finger points at the ferris wheel just several rides away. He doesn’t know why he’s even offering; why he cares enough to bother, instead of letting the matter drop, only storing the information in his head and not doing anything about it. He doesn’t know, but he does this, regardless. Tsutomu has this effect on him: The ‘have Kei do things that make no sense to him’ effect. Kei wonders if there’s a term for this exclusive brand of stupidity. 

Tsutomu steadily backs away from Kei; and Kei wonders if he’s scared enough to make the handsign that wards off evil, the one the Greeks used to do, back in the day.

“Ferris wheels are _slow_.” Tsutomu shakes his head. His bangs flop against his forehead. Kei still wants to give him a haircut but Kei doubts he could give anyone a haircut rather than shaving off their hair and having them go bald—or near-bald, with buzzcuts like Tanaka’s.

“It’s not like you’ll be riding it alone.”

“You’d ride it with me?”

Kei shrugs. “Why not?”

Tsutomu swallows the lemon, the shot of bravery, the adderall pill. “What about Yamaguchi?”

Kei eyes the direction of the bathroom, where Yamaguchi had been headed. He remembers the time they’d gone to a haunted house, during Halloween, back in middle school, and how Yamaguchi spent at least half of the trip stuck in there, too paranoid to leave while being too scared to stay in the bathroom, too. 

“We’ll make it back in time,” Kei decides. 

⁕

This isn’t a date, but it sure as hell is beginning to feel like one.

Tsutomu has only been one date before. It was with a girl from middle school who’d confessed to him on graduation. He’d thought she was cute, so the summer before they started high school, Tsutomu took her to the cinema. It was a lively event: His mom had the time of her life dressing him up; his dad looked proud of him, for once in his life. 

And then there was the date itself. They were both nervous, him even more. Tsutomu spilled his sprite on her lap, staining her pretty white sundress. She’d cried all the way home and he never heard from her again.

His first date was an embarrassing one. It was his first and only date, so Tsutomu can say, with confidence, his dating history is one not worth mentioning at all. 

Him and Kei aren’t out on a date. He’s wearing his ugliest shirt, the furthest thing from date apparel. Kei doesn’t even see him that way—Tsutomu’s sure about this. It isn’t a date, but it’s the best non-date Tsutomu has ever had; surprising given the fact they’re on a ferris wheel and he is deathly scared of heights.

“You don’t have to look at the ground,” Kei says. He is sitting across Tsutomu, looking far more relaxed than his companion. “Or look outside.” He pauses and looks like he’s accidentally sucked on a lemon. “You could look at me instead.”

Tsutomu could feel his pulse striking through his skin. Their booth has an air conditioner. Tsutomu can’t blame it for the burst of pink on his cheeks. 

“I don’t mean anything by that,” Kei adds hastily. Stone sits on Tsutomu’s stomach.

“I know. Why would you?” Tsutomu forces himself to look disgusted at the thought. The only thing that disgusts him is his own disappointment. “Just a couple of dudes being dudes,” he tries for an analogy he’d seen online.

Kei looks to him with confusion. “Sure?”

There’s nothing but silence, awkward and deafening, that comes after. Tsutomu squashes the urge to get off the ride like he’d squash a bug. If he got off now, he would first faint from the sight of the ground, and because he’d faint, he would fall and die. He forces himself to look at something that isn’t the window and looks at Kei who is looking back at him. Neither look away.

“Do you trust me?” Kei asks. He breaks the spell without realizing it’d been there in the first place. It could’ve been a figment of Tsutomu’s imagination.

“Absolutely not,” Tsutomu answers with confidence.

Him and Kei share a grin.

The fear gripping his chest just barely loosens its hold; allowing more pathway for Tsutomu to breathe. He does just that, letting oxygen and anxiety waltz in his lungs.

“Look out the window,” Kei murmurs. “Just do it slowly. I’m here.”

Tsutomu inhales fear and exhales hope. Less reassuring is the sight that greets him: The first thing he notices is the height. How far up they are; how the ground is but a smidge in the distance, people crawling like terramites. (They are not so high up. It is the fear gripping into his vision, placing an illusion in his sight.) More reassuring is when he looks away and sees Kei sitting there, still waiting for him, not looking outside the window—but looking at Tsutomu. Waiting. Encouraging.

“You’re safe,” Kei promises. 

It doesn’t wash away Tsutomu’s fear. Kei doesn’t magically make Tsutomu’s long-standing phobia disappear; but it helps. Kei grounds him. When they are so high up, it is Kei who reminds him they are not so high they can’t go back down; the grounding earth to the smiling sky. Tsutomu takes a deep breath. He looks away from Kei, trying to look at the earth again. He extends a finger towards Kei; Kei grips his index finger with his hand, wrapping the sole appendage.

Kei’s hands are volleyball-rough, calloused from the years he’d spent blocking and tossing balls. They have gripped victory as many times as they have held loss; sometimes, the victory Kei’s hands wrench are Tsutomu’s loss.

In that moment, Tsutomu finds he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about past wins or losses, a tally of numbers and whispers of doubt. All he thinks about is Kei.

He looks out the window, victory cradling him in their strong, steady grip, and Tsutomu sees the ground with clarity.

⁕

**To:** Goshiki Tsutomu

**From:** Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

**Subject:** Favor

Can I stay over at your house tonight? My mom’s visiting Akiteru. She’d rather not leave me in the house alone.

**To:** Karasuno’s Four Eyes B|

**From:** Goshiki Tsutomu

**Subject:**!!!

Sure! My dad’s not gonna be home tonight. It’ll just be us and Temari. (* ≧∀≦ *)

Tsutomu cleans his room. He hides his collection of shoujo manga under his bed, and stuffs his embarrassing hoodies into the drawer until it can barely close. His cleaning playlist consists of bubblegum k-pop he’s picked up from Temari. A girlgroup sings in his ears about _I wanna know, know, know, know, what is love_? (He doesn’t know the answer either.) He pretends he isn’t nervous. 

His hands aren’t clammy but he can feel his pulse striking through his skin.

⁕

Kei had been perusing Tsutomu’s collection of shoujo manga he’d found stuffed under Tsutomu’s bed when Tsutomu suggests they go up to the roof.

“You can go up to the rooftop?” Kei can’t do that in his home. Akiteru watched one too many hollywood coming-of-age movies with the protagonists having life-changing conversations on rooftops. He followed their example to talk to the moon and fell from the rooftop and broke his leg. That happened when Akiteru was in middle school. Since the incident, both Akiteru and Kei have been banned—very strongly—from the rooftop. If his mother could’ve closed off their roof with police tapes, she would have. That’s how strongly she felt (and still feels) of the ban.

“No one’s here to tell us no,” Goshiki says. He’s grinning like he’s sharing a secret. Just something only the two of them would know, nobody else.

Kei feels stupid when he abandons his voice of reason to follow him. Tsutomu’s grin only grows wider, the slight tension in the corners of his eyes dissolving like mist, when Kei sighs but doesn’t say no.

“Are you sure you can find the ladder?”

“Last time it was here, trust me on this—ah! Here it is!” Tsutomu does a giddy, triumphant little cheer when he finds the ladder in the storage closet, struggling as he tries to take it out of the enclosed space. He hits the ladder against the wall, then the door, and Kei takes the ladder just in time for him to regain himself before stubbing his toe. “Thanks.” He grins up at Kei. “You saved me there.”

“Watch where you’re going next time,” Kei tries not to sound as worried as he’d felt. Tsutomu’s face falls, which means it must’ve worked. “I’m always stuck with the idiots.” He walks away with the ladder before his words dawn. He’s already several steps away when Tsutomu realizes what he’d said, yelling half-hearted profanities at his back.

Tsutomu climbs up the ladder first. Kei holds it down for him even if he knows the ladder should be strong enough. Tsutomu doesn’t need to offer a hand to Kei when he climbs too, doesn’t need to help hoist him up. Tsutomu does it anyway. Kei takes his hand, his grip strong and warm and steady.

“Want one?” Tsutomu offers him a can of sprite. 

“Where’d you get that?” Kei, to his credit, only looks suspicious for several seconds before taking the drink. He doesn’t drink it yet.

“Got it while we were passing by the fridge.” Tsutomu opens his can with a hiss. His brows furrow in concentration when he struggles to open the lid with his fingers. Kei has an easier time; takes smug satisfaction in watching Tsutomu compare his own attempt with Kei’s seamless one. “Show-off.”

“It’s not my fault I’m better at opening cans than you are,” Kei says, not diplomatically. Tsutomu’s glare looks fiercer in the moonlight—it still doesn’t intimidate Kei. It’s still like watching a cat glare after getting soaked by a hose. “Summer’s ending soon.”

The days have been getting colder, summer and winter battling for dominance in the heavens. The wind is beginning to nip at their skins despite the warmth lingering on the ground. Kei stares at his arms and sees goosebumps standing across the expanse of his skin. He should’ve brought a jacket, but it had been warmer when the sun set barely three hours ago.

“It is,” Tsutomu agrees. He’d brought a jacket with him, but he notices Kei’s struggle. Tsutomu squeezes himself closer to Kei and ignores the stiffening of Kei’s shoulders. “Body heat,” he explains. “It was really effective when the senpai and I went out camping back in our first year.”

Tsutomu’s eyes always spark with a brighter flame whenever he’s talking about his Shiratorizawa seniors. Three years later, even with the title of an ace, Ushijima’s successor, under his belt, that admiration has never faded. It has grown even stronger: Flames sparked into embers, never dimming into cinders. 

“You might as well share the jacket,” Kei says. He’d meant it as a joke.

Tsutomu still takes off his jacket, his hands moving awkwardly in the dark to adjust the fabric to cover both him and Kei. He flounders through this task alone, as Kei is too busy staring at him with increasing incredulity. 

Kei still tugs his side of the jacket, letting it hug him more closely. The jacket is still warm with Tsutomu’s heat. “Thanks,” he finally says.

Oddly, Tsutomu refuses to look at him. He flints his eyes up at the stars, not even glancing at Kei from the corners of his eyes. Kei frowns.

“After summer ends,” Tsutomu says after a long moment. He still won’t look at Kei, but under the light of the moon and the stars, his gaze is drawn and wistful. “Will we still be friends?”

“You’re overthinking it,” Kei sighs. He takes Tsutomu’s hand without hesitation. It’s dark but he would know the shape of Tsutomu’s hands anywhere. He would know them even when his eyes can’t see and his hands can’t feel. He would know the lines of Tsutomu’s palm, the calluses stretched on his skin, in stillness. He would know them even at the end of the world. 

“It’s a valid concern.” Tsutomu scowls. He only sounds slightly petulant, but his hand squeezes Kei’s. His grip is a little too tight, but he stops squeezing just before their interlocked hands shift from uncomfortable to painful. “We’re enemies.”

“ _Volleyball_ rivals,” Kei corrects. “We’re not meant to fight to the death, you know.” His top lip quirks upward in amusement.

“I guess,” Tsutomu says. He doesn’t sound persuaded, but he has always been the more dramatic of the two of them. “Want to listen to music?”

The only music they’ve been listening to for the past however-many-minutes they have been on the rooftop has been the sound of cicadas, serenading them in the quiet of the night. “Okay,” Kei says.

Tsutomu takes out his fancy smartphone and not-fancy earphones. He offers one bud to Kei, who puts it on his right ear. Tsutomu takes the left. 

“Pick something that won’t burst my eardrums.”

“You need to have faith in my music taste.”

Begrudgingly, Kei admits (to himself, and only to himself) the music Tsutomu picks out isn’t terrible. Soft acoustics ring in his ears, and the singer’s voice is low and husky; an easy melody. He blatantly refuses to look at Tsutomu as he listens to the song, knowing that if he looks, the only thing he will find is a smug grin.

The singer recants their tale of love and heartbreak. Kei is enchanted, sucked into their tale. By the end of the song, he blinks himself out of his haze. Tsutomu’s thumb rubs circles against his wrist.

“Good?” Tsutomu asks. 

“Good,” Kei has to strangle the word through his teeth. “You listen to some decent music. Who knew?”

“Asshole.” Tsutomu knocks their shoulders together. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he’d slid closer to Kei, moving close enough their knees knob against each other. 

Tsutomu stares at him. Kei’s not even glancing his way, but he can feel the weight of his gaze. “What,” he says. He turns to look to Tsutomu; Tsutomu, skin bathed by the moon, little bits of the sky and the stars tumbling in the dark pools of his eyes. 

“Kei,” Tsutomu tests the word. It slips out of his tongue easily, smoothly. His eyes widen when he realizes what he’d just done—when he notices Kei’s frozen face, the rigid line of his back. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to know what your name would sound like in my voice.”

Kei’s mouth is dry when he swallows an ache wedged in his throat. “Tsutomu.”

He doesn’t remember moving his hands, but he blinks, and then he is touching Tsutomu’s jaw, fingertips drawn along it in a ghost of a cradle. Someone exhales, a shaky tremor. He doesn’t know if it’d been him or Tsutomu. He cannot tell when his heart is a heavy ache in his chest and the ache only dissipates when he is close enough to Tsutomu for their noses to touch.

“Kei,” Tsutomu whispers softly; brokenly. He calls Kei’s name like a man who has found a long lost love, a white flag raised in a battlefield. “Kei.”

Kei tries to swallow Tsutomu’s next cry of his name, and it almost happens. Tsutomo’s lips had parted, eyes fluttering to a close, raising a palm from the roof to clasp Kei’s cheek. Only the palm had been balancing him, and as soon as he’d removed it, Tsutomu grips air and panics, slipping from his current spot, arms flailing together as his back nearly falls to the ground.

“Kei!” Tsutomu shrieks, a call for help from someone who is _about to fall off a roof_. Kei curses under his breath and quickly wraps both hands around Tsutomu’s flailing right arm, gripping him with all his strength and lugging him up like a kid trying to win at tug of war.

Tsutomu is eager to get off the roof after that.

They don’t talk about what could’ve happened. Tsutomu calls Kei ‘Kei’ without yearning, without weight; without baggage. Kei calls Tsutomu ‘Tsutomu’ the same way someone would ask a stranger about their day. Their moment was lost, fallen into the ceaseless stream of time, and it would never return.

⁕

“Can we talk?”

Tsutomu corners Kei the morning after; it could, technically, also be called the morning before, as it is the very morning before Kei is slated to come home. 

“About what,” Kei says. He states it. It isn’t a question.

“Last night,” Tsutomu drops his voice when he says this, like he is admitting himself to something scandalous. A cursory look around his kitchen, shiny and modern and reeking of wealth, shows him nobody is listening. Temari is still sleeping, as it’s barely even eight, and his dad is still nowhere to be found. Probably drunk off his ass at a bar, but Tsutomu doesn’t care about that right now. “I think we should talk about it.”

Kei freezes and unfreezes. “There’s nothing to talk about,” he finally answers. He goes back to folding his clothes into his bag. 

“Kei,” Tsutomu pleads.

“Tsutomu,” Kei mocks. He doesn’t even look at Tsutomu, but maybe it’s better that way. 

Maybe it will make the ache hurt less. 

“Nothing happened,” Kei says again, when Tsutomu still can’t find the right words to say. He still can’t find the words, all the possible arrangements swimming in an endless sea and never his to grasp and cup, and then Kei is walking away from him, standing at the doorway. “It was a mistake,” Kei murmurs quietly. Tsutomu nearly loses the sound of his voice to the morning buzz of traffic. 

“We shouldn’t bring it up again.” Kei waves a hand goodbye. Tsutomu returns it mechanically with a robotic smile. He’s still diving for words and the words keep swimming away.

Tsutomu drowns in the ocean of unsaid words and dead sentences. Kei wades above the water, walking out the door, and doesn’t look back.

⁕

Summer ends and school begins.

Tsutomu’s inbox is filled with messages from his teammates and friends, all of them excited for their final year in high school. Some of them have already seen each other, dorming together as they are. _We miss you, man,_ they tell him, sending selfies and candid pictures of each other in Shiratorizawa’s familiar, pristine dorms. _Wish you were here with us, but we’ll see you at school, right?_

On his worse days, Tsutomu thinks about messaging administration and arranging his move back into the dorms. It’d be easy to call a senpai who’s still in the area and ask them for a lift. He doesn’t have much in boxes: It would be a short, quick trip, and then he would be back in the dorms, never having to look at the house across his or think about blond hair and ferris wheels. 

He always stops himself before his thumb presses the dial button. He thinks about blond hair and ferris wheels and an ache that doesn’t heal; but mostly, he thinks about Temari and their dad, who comes home later and later each day, some days not coming home at all. And then he pockets his phone and closes his eyes, shame burning like coal in the bottom of his stomach, for the thought of even leaving his sister behind.

Tsutomu tells his friends he misses them too but he stays where he are, even if he forces his gaze never to stray at the home across his house. The place that was more home to him than his own for the passed summer days. 

One morning, Tsutomu is running late, having slept through his first alarm that’d rung in the empty space between four and five A.M. He’d been fumbling his way out the door, ready to take his bike and speed towards the station, when his eyes linger on familiar shoes in front of him. He had looked up to see Kei, just leaving his house, ready to go to school with a carton of milk sticking to his lips.

They look at each other for a second that passes like an hour, but neither of them speak. Kei stays where he is, never lessening their distance, so Tsutomu doesn’t move, too. 

_I miss you_ , the words find their way from the sea, washed up in the shore in Tsutomu’s head. _I miss summer, I miss us, and I miss you_.

And then Tsutomu realized he was already running late as he was. He’d waved at Kei, a brief, tentative thing, but he was already gone, biking as fast as his legs could carry him by the time Kei gathered the courage to wave back.

⁕

Karasuno’s practice match against Shiratorizawa is going terribly, and that is putting it mildly.

Kei grits his teeth and ignores the sting in his palms. His fingers aren’t strained, that’s enough to keep him playing, even if his palms are scorched red from delayed blocks and missed hits. It’s not the satisfying kind of red, the one he gets from successful blocks and seeing the enemies’ faces of despair on the other side of the net.

“Tsukki,” Yamaguchi mutters while they’re on a quick break. This is their first match against Shiratorizawa with him acting as captain, and he looks far from pleased. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing,” Kei lies. He’s been avoiding this question since school started. Lying has gotten easier, even if the guilt that comes after never gets better. “It’s nothing, Yamaguchi.” Drop it.

He keeps forgetting Yamaguchi isn’t the same boy he was when Kei first met him. He’s no longer a pushover, and when he’s looking for answers, will continue pressing for them no matter what Kei tells him. He’d be proud of him if it weren’t so frustrating.

“Bullshit,” Yamaguchi snaps. The curse draws them some interested looks from their teammates, and Hinata nearly falls of the bench from where he’d been eavesdropping. The orangehead doesn’t even look guilty upon being caught and receiving Kei’s vapid glare. “Something’s been bothering you since school started, Tsukki. Don’t lie to me.”

Kei clenches his palm, and then unclenches. He can still see Tsutomu’s fingers curling against his own. A mocking ghost of a touch by now. “I fucked up,” he confesses.

I fucked up. The words had been easy to say, but Kei knows it barely covers the extent of what he’d done; of the string he’d cut. Kei had run from Tsutomu the same way Kei’s heart is always running from vulnerability, a fleeting and fickle thing.

Yamaguchi doesn’t look as angry. Concern wrinkles his forehead and he checks Kei’s forehead for a fever. “Are you sure you’re Tsukki?” Kei slaps his hand off with a scowl that leaves Yamaguchi snickering. “Sorry, Tsukki. What is it? It has to be bad if it’s affected you like this.”

A pointed look in the direction of their opponent is enough to leave realization dawning in Yamaguchi’s eyes. Hinata, who is still eavesdropping, does not look as clarified; glances at the both of them with a burning curiosity in his eyes that Kei is all too happy to ignore. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” This is Yamaguchi, his friend.

“Not really.”

“Alright. I won’t force you, but whatever it is, try to make sure it doesn’t affect the game next round.” This is Yamaguchi, his captain. Although his words are business, Kei looks into his eyes and sees concern and worry written plainly across them. Kei hides a smile behind his hand. “Tsukki! I’m serious.”

“I know,” Kei says. He moves to get ready for the next round, ready to push all thoughts of Tsutomu into the least accessible corners of his brain. Before, though, he shoots a withered look at Hinata, who squeaks, looking at Kei like he’s the killer in a slasher. “Stay out of my business.”

“I wasn’t listening! Lyingshima!” Hinata weakly defends himself, even looking to their captain for backup; Yamaguchi only sighs and shakes his head, mouthing to Hinata that it’s a lost battle. Him and Kei high-five when Hinata’s back is turned.

⁕

Kei cleans his room and finds an ugly purple shirt wedged off his bed.

It’s Tsutomu’s. Kei looks at it and sees ferris wheels and amusement parks and the face of the boy who had faced his fear while holding Kei in his hands. He’d left the shirt there after Kei finished tutoring him in physics, Kei remembers now, and had always meant to come back for it; only this all happened the day before The Rooftop Incident, and after that happened, Tsutomu never came back to his house at all.

“Mom,” Kei makes a decision, “I’m going to drop something off at Tsutomu’s.”

“Okay, Kei-kun! Don’t stay out too late!”

Kei pulls on a jacket and doesn’t think of the lingering smell of strawberry on Tsutomu’s shirt. Strawberry like the smell of Tsutomu’s shampoo, Kei has learned, from the time he’d caught the whiff of it during tutoring and thought someone brought a strawberry dessert. It had been humiliating for Kei and amusing for Tsutomu; but Kei, humiliated as he’d been, remembers this fondly.

He recalls everything about their summer spent together fondly.

The walk is short, almost laughably so, as their houses are only a cross away. Kei hadn’t messaged Tsutomu prior, but considering Karasuno had already finished their practice, he’d assume Shiratorizawa had, too. Tsutomu would be home, Kei assures himself, because where else would he be?

Casual reassurance bleeds into worry when the sound of voices shouting and yelling grows louder the closer he approaches the house. Kei can’t hear what they’re saying, but he can tell they’re arguing—can practically _sense_ the hostility and anger trickling through incomprehensible words—and when no one responds to his knocks, he tries twisting the knob.

The door opens.

“Dad,” Tsutomu is saying, his voice louder than it usually is even if he wavers with his words, “you’re drunk. Go to sleep.”

“You’re a _failure_ of a son,” Tsutomu’s father is hissing. Shouting. He does not hold a bottle in his hand but his face is red and his words are slurred. “Is volleyball all you can do? You can’t even _study_! You won’t find a respectable job.” He jabs his finger against Tsutomu’s chest. Kei will never be able to forget the way Tsutomu’s entire body flinches before closing in on itself. “You’re wasting my money and you’re wasting my life. I should never have tried to take you instead of letting you and your sister live with your mother.”

Tsutomu is none of the dangerous grins and happy confidence Kei knows him to be. This Tsutomu is a shell of himself, closed and small, not quite whimpering under the weight of his father’s words but letting every sentence paint his skin; ink on the canvas of flesh and blood. “I’m sorry. I’m trying my best to be better.”

“Sorry isn’t enough. Not when you’ve wasted enough of our times for something you can’t even do for the rest of your life.”

Something in Kei snaps.

“That’s enough.” He places himself between Tsutomu and his father, clear cold eyes meeting confused, hazed ones. “You’ve already said what you wanted. Congrats on winning the Shitty Dad of the Year, but I’m sure you’ll have to share the title with some pathetic fucker out there.”

“Who are you?” He sounds angry and confused. Mostly confused. “Stay out of it.” He tries to push Kei away, but Kei is rooted in his place, refusing to budge even the barest hint of muscle.

“No, I don’t think I will.” Kei takes Tsutomu’s hand in his. Tsutomu’s grip still feels the same, even if the time that has passed since Kei last held them feels like an eternity. “We’re leaving.”

And they do. They leave, running as fast as they can away from the house, Tsutomu’s atrocity of a purple shirt still crumpled in Kei’s other hand as Tsutomu’s father shouts at them to stop. (They refuse to.)

⁕

Ukai looks between the both of them incredulously; his face is a frozen frame of morbid curiosity and something close to flabergasted.

“…We’ll just take these buns,” Kei finally says, upon realizing his coach is still trying to process that one of his crows is friends with an eagle. Kei leaves the money on the table and goes outside, Tsutomu hesitantly trailing behind, only stopping once they find an empty bench to sit on. There, he hands Tsutomu’s pork bun to his, along with his shirt, wrinkles and crinkles smiling at them from its purple material.

“You didn’t have to pay for me.” Tsutomu takes a bite from his bun. His eyes widen almost comically. “It’s really good.”

Kei lets his own bun sit on his lap. He’s eaten these meat buns too many times before to rush into devouring them; has practically memorized its taste on his tongue.

“Do you want to tell me what that was about?” Kei’s tone leaves it obvious he expects Tsutomu to tell him. And Tsutomu, after a moment of hesitation he spends chewing on another bite, tells him.

“My dad didn’t take the divorce well.” Tsutomu picks at the skin of his bun. He pops some of the pieces he’d torn into his mouth, and makes sure to thoroughly chew and swallow them before he continues speaking. “So he’s been drinking. I know he’s never really been happy with me either.” Admitting it leaves Tsutomu looking like he’d just shared his biggest secret. His face relaxes slightly after he shares this with Kei, even as he looks at Kei with eyes bordering on pleading. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Kei doesn’t quite gape, but it’s a close thing. “You were being _verbally abused_ by your own father.”

“Doesn’t it ruin my coolness?” Tsutomu attempts to lighten the mood. He fails. “I’m dealing with it on my own. Really.”

“What about Temari?” Kei challenges.

“Right now, she’s staying over at a friend’s house.” Tsutomu drops his gaze to his lap. “He likes Temari. He doesn’t get angry with her.”

“But you chose to live with her anyway.”

Tsutomu falters. His smile, when he finally lets Kei look at him, is sad. Kei wants to wipe it away with his thumb; a look so downcast doesn’t belong on Tsutomu’s bright, illuminating features. “It’s an older brother’s job to worry.”

Akiteru flares and dies in Kei’s head like an unbidden memory.

“Is this why you came to my house so much?” Kei asks. Tsutomu answers this with a guilty smile. “Tsutomu.”

At the sound of his first name rolling off Kei’s tongue, Tsutomu flinches.

For some reason, this fills Kei’s stomach with stones.

“I’m sorry,” Kei is quick to apologize, “I know I don’t have the right to call you that anymore.”

“No!” Tsutomu says, maybe a little too loudly (some birds flee), and shakes his head. “You can keep calling me that, if you want. I was just surprised.” He pauses, warring with himself. “Kei.”

A shiver goes down Kei’s spine when he hears how his name sounds coming from Tsutomu’s mouth. Kei tries to ignore this. Nothing good will come from dwelling on it; on their summer shared that had passed, fading in the echoes of time.

“I missed this,” Tsutomu says, after a long moment of silence has passed. Even in the dark, under the street lamps, his cheeks are faintly red. Not from shyness, but from embarrassment; dropping his pride to admit something even Kei has difficulty getting through his teeth. “I missed being your friend.”

Even then, so many words are left unsaid.

“I missed being your friend, too.” Kei ignores the dryness of his mouth. “I’m sorry for hurting you.”

“Yeah, that was a shitty move,” Tsutomu agrees. “You broke my heart, Kei.” Tsutomu, finished with his bun, twines his right hand with Kei’s left. Kei’s fingers curl against Tsutomu’s instinctively.

Still, it takes Kei a moment to reaffirm Tsutomu’s words are meant in jest. Even then, something heavy sits in Kei’s stomach, rising up to his throat, refusing to dislodge.

“It just…” Kei trails off. Thinks about that night on the rooftop, of how close he’d been to swallowing his name from Tsutomu’s mouth. “It scared me.” Vulnerability. Exposing the line of your neck to someone, baring your weakness for them to sink their claws into, leaving a trail of guts and blood.

“I know.” Tsutomu’s answering smile is sad. He gently releases his hand from Kei’s. Cold air swarms to fill the space he’d left. “Let’s just forget about it.”

“Huh?”

“Forget about what happened this summer. We’ll… we’ll just start over.” Tsutomu’s voice cracks for a moment. Kei, in politeness or in spite, pretends he misses it.

“Do you want to forget about it?” Kei asks hesitantly. To Kei, even the simple act of asking this is the equivalent of keeping his fleeting heart from respite.

Tsutomu is silent for several heartbeats.

When he finally answers, though his lips are smiling, his eyes are heavy with goodbye.

“I don’t think anything else was ever possible.”

Kei sticks out his palm. Tsutomu’s eyes flint towards Kei’s hand, and then back up to his face, with confusion evident in his eyes. “I’m Tsukishima Kei.”

Tsutomu catches on. Some of the sadness morphs into amusement, but when he looks at Kei, he is looking at Kei like a man who has met their great love only to say goodbye. “I’m Goshiki Tsutomu! I don’t usually let acquaintances do this, but you can call me Tsutomu.”

“Then you can call me Kei.”

**Author's Note:**

> please commiserate with me about them on [twitter](https://twitter.com/genshinkaeya)
> 
> the quote in the beginning was richard siken's because he's great at ripping my heart out.  
> i hope this has convinced at least one other person out there into thinking about tsukigoshi. that's it, that's all i wrote this for.  
> in other news, it's almost 11pm. my back hurts and i want to lay down but instead of sleeping i dedicated the last few hours of my day into finishing this thing. i do hope you enjoyed reading this! if you did, feel free to leave kudos or comments, both are equally appreciated & held dear 2 me.  
> this hasn't been beta'd yet by the way, so please be nice. ; ; and if you see me editing things from time to time... well. it happens!!  
> now i will be listening to loona's new album and passing the fuck out.
> 
> as always, take care.


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